Today I received an e-mail from a guy I met in high-school. He was in Paris for a week, visiting with my boyfriend of the time. After that I might have seen him on a couple of occasions. The words he uses to describe the me he met as a teen-ager are "neo-social-involved-queen". I am flabbergasted at such an accurate portrayal. I guess we are who we are.

Yesterday Melissa, Checco and I went to Battery Park City. It took us forever to get there because, once again, I gost lost. It was very hot (90 degrees) and humid but we had lunch outside by the marina with Johanny, Pascale, Candy and the baby. After lunch we hopped on the free bus to South Street Seaport and took the Shark boat ride. The guy with the mike on the boat said something about my hair looking like it was supposed to look after the ride. What is it about people? Can't they tell it takes me four different hair products and hours of patient sculpting to look this messy? And, by the way, the word to describe it is "tousled" or, better yet, "that sexy just-out-of-bed look". Anyways, I had a grand time, as usual, and ended up completely soaked (and embarrassed, I must add, with my tee-shirt glued to my tits) and so did the kids (soaked, no tits to worry about there). From South Street Seaport we went back to Battery Park City and spent the rest of the afternoon there. Melissa and Candy chatting, Checco and Johanny playing volley-ball. For dinner we all went to Chevy's, where we were waited on by the nicest guy.

Today I woke up and started making sandwiches like a madwoman.

I also baked a spinach pie.

The plan was a picnic in Central Park with Johanny, Pascale, the baby, Candy, Checco, Melissa and I. I made so much food everybody ate plenty and I still returned home with 11 untouched sandwiches. Today was ever hotter than yesterday (95 degrees) but we tried to stay in the shade while Johanny played baseball.

I am getting sick of the media bashing of Tom Cruise. He might be coming apart but then again he might not. Scientology is a little cookie? What about the rest of the so-called religions? Why doesn't the media go after the ridiculous believes of the outspoken majority? The Christian right? The evangelicals? So he's in love. Good for him. Why can't we just rejoice in the complete silliness of a man who's head-over-heels over a woman? Is it a publicity stunt? Yeah, sure, like he needs it. It's the media that need something to talk about, not Tom Cruise who probably can afford not to sell one more frigging movie ticket ever again. He think psychiatry is a pseudoscience. Well, it is. Matt Lauer believes a lot a people have been helped by antidepressants. I believe a lot of people are helped by heroin. Both are drugs, the fact that a "doctor" prescribes one and not the other does not make one of them any better. I might (as in maybe, just maybe) agree with drugs for schizophrenia and other major illnesses, but I am so against popping pills for just about every little and big thing in life. And I find the whole ADD/Ritalin hoopla a disgrace. Matt, Matt, Matt, I used to like you ...

Hot and humid

It is going to be one of those unbearable Summer days so I am picking up Melissa in a while and going to Battery Park with her and Checcho. We then might go to South Street Seaport and take a boat ride.

Francesco (Checco) is here. He is the cutest kid and he is very nice on top of it. I think this will work out fine.I barely gave him time to sit down and we were out, on our way to meeting Elena and getting to the Engadget meet-up - lots of friendly people there, by the way. I am waiting for the pictures on the blog. I am also waiting to win the lottery so I can buy all those gadgets. Unfortunately we were very very hungry and we did not stay till the give-outs.I had not been in that part of town forever and we discovered quite a few interesting bars and restaurant that looked worth giving a try. Actually, we did have dinner at one. Terrific caipirinha, the same exact taste as the ones I used to drink at a Saturday market back in Montevideo.We had chance encounters with Ana and one of her daugthers, and with Troy and Maureen. Chance encounters? In NYC?

The second shallow self-centered part of the yesterday turned into a me-me-fest. Manicure, pedicure, foot massage, eyebrows, back rub, the works. Delicious.Then I had dinner and a wonderful time with Annie and Dario, just flown in from Europe, at Maria's. He brought over some very good light white wine and a real Italian salami. We did the arugula salad, the San Daniele prosciutto, the cherries, among other things. The conversation was all about Unicef's gala in Holland, which he attended, and fund-raising, both in general and in relation to a couple of specific projects too. It should compensate for the me-me-fest, shouldn't it?

Shallow self-centered part of the day I: up at 5:45 AM. At the gym by 6 AM. An hour stepping on the elliptical to blasting iPod. Curious breakfast with a couple of turnip cakes and some real espresso.Shallow self-centered part of the day II: pedicure and manicure after work.

Went to the gym with Annie in the morning, had lunch and spent the afternoon with Melissa, even managed to buy stuff I actually needed, like sheets, then when Rommy was done with her shift at the restaurant she is now working at, I met Marc and her for one of those nights out. We had a very good dinner at a shabby Vietnamese diner and then cabbied downtown. The first stop was Maritime, but the line was too long and the people too chichi, so we just went around the corner to XL. Marc desperately wanted us to see his "find" and was very disappointed when,as soon as we walked upstairs and I recognized the place, I told him I had already been there. Trivia must-know: the open restrooms at XL were featured in an episode of Sex and the City. From XL we took another cab to another place (might have been another world):La Escuelita. The strangest creatures were there, a long long shot from all the chichiness at Maritime. The butchiest lesbians, the most operated-on drags, it was quite a sight. Kinda sleazy but fun. Everybody dancing the night off. I am still wondering who the class B wanna-be star was. A black girl who though herself gorgeous but had a very sorry ass, who came in with a bunch of thugs in black shades and sat at a "reserved by owner" table next to the dance floor. She was drinking champagne and made a whole production every time she stood up and walked to the drags to stuff money into their dresses. She probably thought she was J.Lo with Puff Daddy, but it was very very sad. They mentioned her name several times and said something about an upcoming album but our celebrity radar did not register. I hope her mom is a fan.Back to us. We danced, we watched the drag show, we danced a little more and I was home by 3.30 AM. Having nursed 2 and half beers all night, including the one for dinner, I woke up this morning with sore legs but not majorly damaged. Now I need a coffee presto because I am meeting a bunch of people for dim sum in Chinatown.

Ah, New Yorkers, even the adopted ones can be so blasé!The boss and I run, camera in hand, ever so excited, to a coworker's office, the one practically on 42nd St. and the river, and we find her sitting down at her desk. Upon telling her of the crash she goes "Oh, so that's what we saw falling into the water".

We saw plenty of ambulances and rescue people. The boss saw somebody being pulled out of the water. According to the media, there were 8 passengers and 2 crew. One is in serious condition. Poor people.

I am a big consumer of baby swipes but I am a sucker for customization, so I looked around on the web and came up with a few recipes - well, basically it's the same recipe with some minor variations. I had to try it right away. I folded a few paper towels (I think they are Bounty, the ones that feel like cloth), put them in a tupperware, ignored all the precise measurements and just mixed water, baby oil, hand soap and peppermint essential oil in a cup and poured the liquid on the paper towels. I am now waiting for them to be thoroughly soaked. Voila!

I am on the look-out for photos of Terry Hatcher's feet because I distinctly remember noticing how crooked they were and wondering why would she insist on wearing sandals.

In the meantime, enjoy these babies:

Those were actually the feet chosen by a French catalogue to showcase a pair of sandals!!!!

And what about these next monstruosities? They are permanently attached to the legs of a pretty model. In Annie's word: "There is a God after all!".

Speaking of atrocities, check out Santiago's mouth. This poor guy is a friend of my sister's and was recently beaten and robbed on the street in Montevideo. The muggers broke his jaw and now he has to eat through a straw.

Melissa has graduated from middle-school and will soon start high-school at Cristo Rey. I had no idea what to expect from yesterday's ceremony buy I was a little apprehensive, figuring that the long dresses, the hairdos, the rehearsals, were a little too much for middle-school. What I saw instead was an impressive display of family and friends backing up their girl's education. There were 15 graduates and the church was packed. They wore very simple long silver satin dresses. Melissa had white sandals, a very nice hairdo, light make-up and color contact lenses (in my eye color, in her words). The whole ceremony was bilingual, as many of the parents and guardians do not speak English. The director, a very nice lady who is retiring and who had her mother in the audience, gave a quite moving speech focusing on not being scared to be good, not being scared to be yourself. Then they gave out the awards. Melissa won one of for making extraordinary efforts during her years at the school. One girl, whose mother I talked to later, won an award for not having missed a single day of school in four years!!!!! Talk about commitment! Every time a girl's name was called the whole church erupted in applause and cheers. A few of the kids in the audience looked like bona fide thugs and there they were, clapping away at the academic achievements of a girl. They almost brought the house down when their relative/friend was the one to win the scholarship for high-school. Another girl won an award for sciences, presented to her by a previous winner who is now doing pre-med. I, of course, was choking up every five seconds or so. It was quite an eye-opener. At the party afterwards I was sitting at the table with the family and a few friends, a very nice teacher from Panama among them, while Melissa was inside dancing with her friends. We had an opportunity to talk about what the kids face and I was fascinated by the sheer determination and common sense of some of these parents. Kudos to them all!

Very tired. Muscle pains. Bad skin. Called in sick and went back to bed to sleep on and off until 11 AM. Candy craving yesterday. Ready to kill a baby for some pasta today. There we go again. The recurring female thing that I will not mention lest I upset Nicolas.

I spent quite a while filling forms to apply for a promotion at work. After a lot of cussing (I absolutely HATE paperwork) I am almost done. The deadline is fast approaching and I am the one and only internal candidate who has not sent in the application. I swear I'll do it tomorrow. Really.

Right now I might have myself a little limoncello to get me started. Eventually I need to leave my room and get to Melissa's graduation.

I have been spending an hour on the elliptical trainer for several days now. Yesterday I said it was no big deal. This morning I woke up at 5:45, before the alarm, and at 6 AM sharp I was stepping away. Less than 15 minutes later I was done, tired to the bone. I switched to a bicycle, gingerly pedaling for a few minutes before giving up and coming back home. Better give it a rest today.

I did not blog about my December/January trip to Madrid. I did not blog about my week-end trip to North Carolina. Not because that was my original plan. And not because I had nothing to blog about. It's just that I only seem to blog when I am at home in NYC.The diary I keep when I am away (sometimes nothing more than a few notes scribbled down here and there) is of too personal a nature to be published here. Yet, I feel somewhat guilty for these silences. Maybe one day I will sit down and spill the beans. All the beans.

This person was actually exercising on the elliptical machine at my left on Friday evening. He has a bad case of alopecia, no hair on his head, no eyebrows, no lashes. His legs are two shapeless tree trunks and he wears his beige socks stretched to mid calf. The skin on his face is taunt and shiny. The poor man looks a lot like an alien from outer space. His lower body movement are quite normal, he just goes up and down like everybody else. His upper body though... his upper body does weird contortions, his hands reach out sometimes in punch-like movements, sometimes like he's chasing butterflies, then his fingers come down flapping along his body while he puffs out his chest. The eccentric, convulsive dance goes on and on and on. We, the rest of the losers spending a Friday night at a gym, try very hard not to look at him but inevitably catch each other's eyes and suppress the laughter as much as we can. Annie wants to talk to the guy, just to find out what kind of music he's listening to.

The week has not started yet

but the plans are in full swing. I am working the evening shift this coming week, except on Tuesday, when I have to work regular hours so I can get to Melissa's middle school graduation ceremony and party.

Tomorrow evening, if it's not too late, I might be having dinner with Chicca, a girl from my high-school in Paris. She was several years younger than me. Probably still is, but I hope it won't show. She's an architect in Milan now and should have arrived to NY tonight, for a couple of days, to check on a project.

So that takes care of Monday evening and Tuesday evening. Next Saturday evening is already booked for a movie with Debra and probably Sunday morning for dim sum with Vivian and a bunch of other people.

Friday Annie will be leaving, earlier than expected because she needs to stay at a friend's house and take her of her dying dog while she's away on a mission. Pam might take advantage of the opening and come up. And then Francesco will arrive on the 24th. I spoke to his mom today and she seemed very nice. He'll leave on July 8th and hopefully M.A. will be here on the 9th. His brother Quique should arrive on the 13th. I am planning on working a couple of week-ends before then so I can take a few days off to hang out with them and enjoy their company.

Yesterday, between meeting Pascale and Johanny for lunch and having birthday cake with Nina and then back to Pascale and Johanny for dinner, I managed to buy 2 skirts and 3 pairs of shoes. Given that this week I have already received my on-line order from La Redoute and that I have stopped by Lord and Taylor to get yet another skirt, maybe somebody should be kind enough to wrestle my Visa card out of my hand. This girly mood of mine is costing me a fortune.

No gym this morning (but we will be going later this evening). Annie and I both went out yesterday and we just needed to sleep a little longer today. She had a reception and dinner with fellow coworkers, I went to the fund-raising happy hour and then had dinner at an Italian place with Benjamin, Pilar and Carmen. The place has received several awards, completely undeserved, IMHU. It’s not like it sucked but it certainly was nothing to write home about either. I had a very average risotto. It actually inspired me to go make my own. It used to be better than what I ate yesterday. On the other hand, the oreo cookie cake was punch-in-the-gut rich and loooovely.

Tomorrow it's dinner at Ana's (it was cancelled last week due to bad weather). She has an amazing duplex that will soon be featured in the paper. I already have started bragging about it, of course. It truly is an outstanding place.

Speaking of decoration, if you are in a generous mood or simply want to make me very happy, please feel free to choose anything, absolutely anything, from trendir. You won't believe the smile on my face.Meanwhile, I am also open to witty ideas to use as wall graffiti. I am giving myself a couple of days and then I will order it from wonderfulgraffiti.com.

At Bob's party yesterday I chatted with his yoga teacher. He seemed like a really nice nice and the real deal. So Wednesday I will go to his fund-rasing happy hour and I hope to be able to bring a bunch of people. Those who cannot come could maybe donate on-line, hu?

Once in a while one comes across a stupid idiot. My turn was yesterday. My short short haircut needed a trim and I had wanted to give this stupid idiot a try. So I called him a week ago. He sounded very strange on the phone, told me he had just had nose surgery and was feeling dizzy and if I could please call him in a week. Being the sweet personable ass that I am I made some light remarks about his (elective) surgery, hoped he would be feeling better soon and said I would be calling again. Which I did. Yesterday. The stupid idiot answers. I ask for an appointment. He says he can do it at 7 PM. He then asks me whether he had cut my hair before. I say no. He asks if I was being referred by a client. I say no. He ask how I found him. Through the Internet, I say. He says he does funky short hair. I say, good, that's exactly what I want, funky messy short hair. He says he does kids, teen-agers, college kids. I am at kid at heart, do I qualify? He says he usually does not take new clients. By now I am a little surprised. I ask whether he wants to cut my hair or not. He replies, robot-like, that he usually does not take new clients. I guess usually means now to him. To make a long story short, there was no appointment. But this stupid idiot could have told me no a week ago and I could have made an appointment with my regular hairdresser, who is now out of town. Stupid idiot. Stupid spacey idiot at that.

So I ended up going to the salon just across from home. Not my first choice for a haircut, but I just wanted a trim. I got it for 19 bucks and I was in and out in no time so I am not complaining. In the few minutes I was there I was also treated to the spectacle of some very weird looking woman reacting to an overdose of medication or maybe it was just some acute psychotic episode. She was being shampooed and so was I when I heard this commotion. She got up, babbling, crying, trembling. At the beginning I had no idea what was wrong, I thought maybe they had burned her hair to shreds (it has happened to me once, but it was sort of fun, my friend Liliana was playing hairdresser on my hair, in the middle of the night, I was relaxing, sipping wine ...) or maybe somebody had managed to rape her viciously right there on the chair and nobody had given a damn. Well no, the tragedy was that the poor girl who was washing her hair had turned the water too hot. That was enough to send this lady into total despair. They had to walk her to another chair, sit her down, breath with her to try and calm her down. What a resilient soul. I wonder what happens to her when she comes face to face with real hardship like, maybe, a broken nail.

This emotional roller coaster got me so shooked up that I didn't even join Fabian for some dancing last night. Just not fair.

Yay! The countdown!

M.A. called yesterday. He might be coming to NY earlier than expected. I am not sure whether he wants to stay here or to take a few days off and go somewhere. Either way, it sounds perfect. I can hardly wait. My partner in crime is coming!

Yesterday Chema saved my life, or at least my liver, with a few drops of Hepatalgina, a wonder over-the-counter drug from Argentina. I must have been a sight, of the beached whale variety, slumped over my desk after an obscenely abundant lunch at the Delegate's Dining Room. I should have stopped after the first trip to the buffet. I wasn't even hungry to begin with. Needless to say, I did not stop at the first trip, nor at the second. On top of everything else I had to have a quadruple serving of ice-cream and some sabayon, the equivalent of cholesterol being pumped right into your arteries. I could barely move afterwards. Chema also prepared some mate with boldo for me. The end reuslt was me running run home like a bat out of hell, praying fervently all the way. Whether I made it in time or not it's not a subjet to be discussed in a blog. Fortunately I am a blonde again. At least I'll look bright and sunny when they find my body on the toilet like Elvis’.

A full house

Annie moved in yesterday.I asked Pam not to come this week because we are waking up really early to get to the gym and we are planning on hitting the swimming pool some evenings too (the non happy hour evenings, of course). She was planning on coming with a friend, so maybe it's best to wait a little. Annie is staying up until the arrival of the Italian kid. I still haven't heard from Liliana, who might be coming this Summer, too.

Week-end plans

This evening, weather permitting (so far, prospects do not look good), there's a BBQ over at Ana's. Sunday I absolutely MUST take Derek's last class and in the evening Bob's having his annual Gemini party.